The Author Who Opens All His Doors to Ankara: Barış Bıçakçı

• Main Author: Ülkü Eliuz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Koc University, Vehbi Koc Ankara Studies Research Center (VEKAM) 2017-06-01
• Series: Ankara Araştırmaları Dergisi
• Subjects: Ankara; Narrative; Environmental space; Empirical space; Town; Person; Barış Bıçakçı
• Online Access: https://www.journalagent.com/jas/pdfs/JAS_5_1_131_138.pdf

Barış Bıçakçı, who emerged on the literary stage as a poet and began publishing his works of fiction in the 2000s, has reinforced his place in the literary world with his minimalist style that says many things with few words. In time terms, his tales (six novels and one book of short stories) begin from the end of the 1970s and continue through to the present day, but the vast majority of the action takes place in Ankara. Ankara, which takes the leading role in all of Bıçakçı’s works, is brought to life through its roads and streets, its parks and housing blocks, its coffeehouses and bars as a city that brings people together and unites them. It is even more full of life than the novels set in it and the characters of their stories. Indeed, its colors are sometimes buffed to double the intensity in order to emphasize the colorlessness of certain individuals. The people of the metropol, who are increasingly moving away from their traditional values, have become estranged by their lack of communication with the society they find themselves in and feel a strong yearning for the past; love and passion are made feelings that isolate the individual, and the characters adopt a variety of attitudes towards death. As for the location, Ankara, it is both the witness and the subject of all that goes on.